By Kevin Roose
From The New York Times

Not long ago, an unusual visitor arrived at the sleek headquarters of Goldman Sachs in Lower Manhattan.

It wasn’t some C.E.O., or a pol from Athens or Washington, or even a sign-waving occupier from Zuccotti Park.

It was Sister Nora Nash of the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia. And the slight, soft-spoken nun had a few not-so-humble suggestions for the world’s most powerful investment bank.

Way up on the 41st floor, in a conference room overlooking the World Trade Center site, Sister Nora and her team from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility laid out their advice for three Goldman executives. The Wall Street bank, they said, should protect consumers, rein in executive pay, increase its transparency and remember the poor.

In short, Goldman should do God’s work— something that its chairman and chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, once remarked that he did. (The joke bombed.)

Long before Occupy Wall Street, the Sisters of St. Francis were quietly staging an occupation of their own. In recent years, this Roman Catholic order of 540 or so nuns has become one of the most surprising groups of corporate activists around.

The nuns have gone toe-to-toe with Kroger, the grocery store chain, over farm worker rights; with McDonald’s, over childhood obesity; and with Wells Fargo, over lending practices. They have tried, with mixed success, to exert some moral suasion over Fortune 500 executives, a group not always known for its piety.

Click here to read the full article.

Polarized debates around migration, national identities and integration of Muslims in today’s society are increasing in Europe and North America.
The UN Alliance of Civilizations has invited two prominent personalities for a conversation on these issues: the New York Times journalist Roger Cohen, and the Philosopher and Muslim Scholar Tariq Ramadan.

The discussion will focus on the reasons immigration is perceived as negatively affecting coexistence in Europe, and why Islam is often depicted as incompatible with Western values. Together with the in-house and online audience, discussants will explore ways to better acknowledge European and American Muslims’ contributions to their societies, and examine what role these groups can have in supporting the integration of recent Muslim immigrants.

The conversation will be held on Monday, December 20th in London, UK, from 2h to 3h30pm, at the St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace (78 Bishopsgate).

The in-house and online audience will be invited to put forward questions to the speakers in real time, by email or facebook.

Click here to learn more and view the event online

From the New York Times

Time for a pop quiz.

The New York Times reported recently on a Pew Research Center poll in which religious people turned out to be remarkably uninformed about religion. Almost half of Catholics didn’t understand Communion. Most Protestants didn’t know that Martin Luther started the Reformation. Almost half of Jews didn’t realize Maimonides was Jewish. And atheists were among the best informed about religion.

So let me give everybody another chance.

Click here to read the entire article.

Sheik Hamza Yusuf

From The New York Times

A recent spate of arrests of Muslims accused of terrorism in the United States has revealed that many of them were radicalized by militant preaching they found on the Internet.

Now nine influential American Muslim scholars have come together in a YouTube video to repudiate the militants’ message. The nine represent a diversity of theological schools within Islam, and several of them have large followings among American Muslim youths.

The video is one indication that American Muslim leaders are increasingly engaging the war of ideas being waged within Islam.

“We need to shepherd our own flock and to say that, theologically, these things are unacceptable,” said Imam Suhaib Webb, the educational director for the Muslim American Society, a grass-roots group in Santa Clara, Calif., who is among the nine in the video. “The Prophet Muhammad, when on the battlefield, saw that amongst the enemy there were innocent women and children killed, and he was openly angry. He is prohibiting us from killing the innocent. It is very clear.”

Click here to read the entire article.

From The New York Times

Hands waved overhead. Voices shouted lyrics and whooped with delight. Children were hoisted onto parents’ shoulders. In the tightly packed crowd a few dancers made room to jump. T-shirts were tossed to fans from the stage.

Yet in the songs that Abida Parveen was singing, saints were praised. They were Islamic saints, the poets and philosophers revered by Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam.

It was the first New York Sufi Music Festival, a free three-hour concert on Tuesday in Union Square, and it had music from the four provinces of Pakistan, including traditional faqirs who perform outside temples, Sufi rock and a kind of rapping from Baluchistan.

The concert was presented by a new organization called Pakistani Peace Builders, which was formed after the attempted bombing in Times Square by a Pakistani-American. The group seeks to counteract negative images of Pakistan by presenting a longtime Pakistani Islamic tradition that preaches love, peace and tolerance.

Click here to read the entire article.

From NYT

CIBUBUR, INDONESIA — In Indonesia’s crowded world of celebrity Muslim preachers, it often pays to have a trademark. For Koko Liem, his ever-present Chinese-style outfits — garish satin tunics paired with matching skullcaps — play the role.

Whether in television appearances or Koran recitals, the approach of Mr. Liem, a 31-year-old convert to Islam from Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority, is undeniably kitschy. In multihued permutations of his signature garb, he mixes preaching with guest appearances on dating and talk shows and promotes a religiously themed text-messaging service through his Web site.

Mr. Liem is one of a small but significant group of ethnic Chinese preachers to emerge over the past decade with a simple message: that being a member of Indonesia’s dominant majority — Muslims — and its historically most maligned minority — Chinese — need not be mutually exclusive.

“Clerics don’t only have to wear turbans. I’m a Chinese cleric. This is how I am,” Mr. Liem said at his home outside Jakarta, bouncing around boyishly on the couch in a crimson version of what he calls the “Koko Liem Costume.”

To outsiders, that assertion may seem unremarkable, even banal. But in Indonesia, it represents a powerful break with the past.

Click here to read the entire article.

The New York Times reports that the U.S. State Department has lifted its visa ban on Prof Tariq Ramadan, who was a featured speaker at the 2009 Parliament in Melbourne.  Commentators interpret this move to indicate a new openness to dialogue by the current U.S. administration.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/world/europe/21london.html?scp=1&sq=tariq%20ramadan&st=cse

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Nicholas Kristof has followed up his recent column on President Carter’s Parliament speech.  Citing the president’s involvement with The Elders, Kristof echoes Carter’s plea for leaders to “change all discriminatory practices within their own religions and traditions.”  The column, which addresses upfront the oppression of women in religious contexts, also provides powerful examples of religiously motivated advocacy and empowerment.

To read the full column, click here.

To see our video of President Carter’s speech, click here.

Nicholas Kristof, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and respected columnist for the New York Times has just published a blog post discussing President Jimmy Carter’s speech to the 2009 Parliament of Religions.  Describing the speech as “magnificent,” Kristof reflects on the question of the capacity of religion to act as either an impediment or an aid to women’s rights around the world.

To read Kristof’s post, click here.

To see our video of President Carter’s speech, click here.